Our Story

I grew up in Idaho and was always involved in sports. My two goals were to play professional football and own a gym. I worked hard in the weight room and trained constantly to get stronger and faster. I loved the results I got in the gym, which led me to compete in a few body-building competitions. After high school, I was fortunate enough to receive a football scholarship and moved to Springfield, Missouri for college. I designed a lot of the workouts for our team and individual players to prepare for the season. I was a Student Strength & Conditioning Specialist and basically lived in the weight room all through college. I constantly researched new methods of training and soaked up every bit of knowledge I could from experts around me. It was through my hard work in the gym that I saw success on the field. After college I was able to continue playing football in Europe. When my playing career came to an end, I continued writing and designing workouts for athletes and became a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) through the NSCA. I worked at a sports performance facility and trained high school, collegiate and professional athletes. I continued training hard myself, but I no longer had football to train for. That’s when I heard about CrossFit. I was introduced to CrossFit by Jeremy Mhire, one of the CrossFit Springfield owners. He accepted my request to start training at his box. I was overwhelmed at the difficulty of the workouts but even more with the way the CrossFit community treated me. I was immediately welcomed and encouraged to get better. CrossFit is an atmosphere unlike anything else because it provides competition and community all while pushing your limits. I very quickly realized this was the type of gym I wanted to open. I spoke with the owners of CrossFit Springfield about my plans to start a box and like true CrossFitters, they were ecstatic for me and offered any help they could give. In order to combine my love for training athletes, Crossfit 417 will also have a sports performance component (Freak Performance) to develop area athletes/teams training for their specific sport. CrossFit is creating a fitness revolution and I am so excited to be part of it. I want to compete at CrossFit Regionals and hopefully the CrossFit Games in the near future. However, I couldn’t do any of this without my best friend and wife, Andrea who shares my passion for staying fit. I hope you’ll come in and see what CrossFit 417 is all about! ~Jared